Raymond van Barneveld failed to reach the fourth round at the World Darts Championship. The five-time world champion had to acknowledge his superiority in the number 1 in the world, Gerwyn Price: 0-4.
The match already started with some commotion: Price would have asked the PDC boss if he could play with hearing protection. It turned out to be empty words, because it didn’t happen. However, the Welshman was quite whistled at his arrival.
The darts player from The Hague certainly had no chance against the world champion of 2021 in advance. He defeated in mid-November The Iceman at the Grand Slam of Darts even twice: first in the group stage, later for a place in the semi-finals. Especially in that last match he made an impression: with 16-13 he caused a downright stunt. Michael Smith would eventually stop ‘Barney’ on his way to the final.
Ruthless Price
His grandchild has his birthday this Tuesday and Van Barneveld draws strength from that, he indicated in advance. “Then you have the idea: nobody is going to beat me today.” Price has never beaten Van Barneveld in six mutual matches. Could he do it again?
It didn’t start well. The Iceman Van Barneveld broke once and was very strong in the doubles: 3-1 in legs and therefore 1-0 in sets. Also in set 2, Price was relentless on the doubles as he broke ‘Barney’ right at the start of the set. In the end, set 2 was also for the former rugby player.
Shake head
In the third set, the Hagenaar had to pull out all the stops to make it to a fifth leg. Price missed tops before the set, but because ‘Barney’ threw a mediocre leg, was allowed The Iceman again, but he missed it again. Double 8, however, was not spent on the head-shaking Van Barneveld. The set arrow should have been in, because Price said ‘thank you’ afterwards: 3-0 in sets.
In set 4, Van Barneveld lost faith. He saw that Price was a size too big for the five-time world champion this evening. With double 10 it was over: lay, set and match .